Chargesheet: It was suicide, and Tharoor abetted

New Delhi: Over four years after Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar, 51, was found dead in a hotel suite here, the Delhi Police on Monday charged the senior Congress leader with abetting her suicide.The chargesheet, filed in the court of Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmender Singh, who will consider it on May 24, says Pushkar’s body bore “scuffle marks” when found in her suite at Leela Hotel on the night of January 17, 2014. “These (the marks) seem to have been caused due to a scuffle between Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor and her husband Shashi Tharoor, as per the statement of their personal attendant Narain Singh. However, this fact is being examined further.” The chargesheet also says that Pushkar’s brothers and son have made “no allegations against anyone”.Dismissing as “preposterous” the nearly 3,000-page chargesheet, Tharoor, 62, said he intended to contest it vigorously. “No one who knew Sunanda believes she would ever have committed suicide, let alone abetment on my part. If this is the conclusion after four-plus years of investigation, it does not speak well of the methods or motivations of Delhi Police. In October 2017, the law officer made a statement in the Delhi HC that they have not found anything against anyone, and now they say I have abetted suicide. Unbelievable!” The Congress stood by its Thiruvananthapuram MP, calling it a “conspiracy” by the Modi government to malign and defame him. Tharoor is the only one to be arrayed as an accused in the case, which the police have concluded is that of suicide. On January 1, 2015, the police had filed an FIR against unknown persons under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC. The Congress MP has been charged under IPC Sections 498-A (husband or relative subjecting a woman to cruelty), which entails a maximum punishment of three years, and 306 (abetment to suicide), which attracts a maximum jail term of 10 years.